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Büchler PavelWas born in 1952 in Prague where he studied at the Graphic Arts School at the Institute of Applied Arts. He has lived in Great Britain since 1981. He is the co-founder of the Cambridge Darkroom Gallery (1983-87). From 1992-1996 he was the head of the School of Fine Art in Glasgow. Currently, he is a Research Professor at the Metropolitan University in Manchester. In 2009 Büchler received the prestigious Northern Art prize, awarded to artists working in the northern part of Great Britain. Pavel Büchler describes his artistic practice as “making nothing happening.” The most important thing for him is discovering of the uncanniness of ordinary things. In Büchler’s works old-fashioned technologies, sound recordings, light and text make up installations whose subjects include experience and creation of meaning in art. The Studio Schwitters in Max Wigram Gallery In London (2010), as part of which 75 sirens played the Ursonate by Schitter, was a very important sound presentation of the artist. Another important work was The Castle installation presented in many different European cities (such as Bern, Shanghai, Eindhoven). The context of every city provided a fragment of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, which was read out, with different meanings. Kafka’s anti-utopian vision gained in strength thanks to Marconi’s loud speakers from 1926 (it is also the year in which The Castle was first published) and modified voice, which reminded one of propaganda speeches of the first decades of the 20th century. |
Theory - unrealized projectReferences to the city history and history was the main part of the project Pavel Büchler plans to implement in Krakow as part of the Art Boom festival. As part of the debate on the history of the city and the historical nature of its buildings and their symbolical and material value, conducted in the last couple of years, issues have emerged connected with the modernist architecture heritage problems. The problem of modernist buildings in Krakow is connected with the city’s historical nature, unlike in other cities where the main problem is the outdatedness and lack of functionality of solutions. In Krakow, the rich nature of architecture older than modernist buildings automatically symbolically devaluates the younger architecture, additionally affected by connotations with communism, which in Poland was the period of development of post-war modernist tendencies.  In the last couple of years the issue of uncertain status of modernist works of architecture has found its expression in the discussions concerning the so-called Szkieletor or the Biprostal building. Another building whose future existence is uncertain is the Cracovia hotel. This modernist project of high artistic value has become for Pavel Bücher a sign of important changes in reception of such architecture. His intervention consisting in removal of letters from the hotel’s signboard to arrange them in the word ‘TEORIA’ (theory), reminds us of the power of theoretical assumptions at the source of the whole modernist movement and, at the same time, through its etymology, asks us to rethink the way we see things and the meaning they have in a specific context.  His intervention consisted in removing some of the letters of a hotel-sign in such a way that the sign read 'THEORY.' The action was, on the one hand, to remind us of the great power of theoretical assumptions underlying the whole modernist movement, and, on the other, via reference to the etymology of the word 'theory' - to reflect upon the way we look at things and what they mean in a particular context. Despite artist's long efforts, the hotel owner did not consent to the intervention. As a response, then, the artist created a photomontage Theory - an unrealized project - a sketch of the planned metamorphosis of the hotel, which was exhibited in front of the Cracovia Hotel. The Theory project had not been completed, which reminds us even the more of the fiasco of theoretical (utopian, as it turned out) assumptions of the avant garde in general, and modernist architecture in particular. As the postmodernists argue, the advocated functionalism (in theory) proved to be little functional (in practice). Based on recent events regarding some of Krakow's important modernist buildings, we can get an impression of certain general enormous aversion to modernist architecture and also towards the handful of proponents of retaining this type of architecture in the urban fabric. It seems that many of Krakow’s inhabitants wish that buildings such as the Cracovia could quietly disappear from the urban landscape. Does such a fate await the foremost example of the 1960s architecture we have today in Krakow? Who owns the public space and should inhabitants' opinion be considered at all? Pavel Büchler's Theory project aimed to pose questions regarding the most important problems connected with the modernist architectural heritage right from the facade of the Hotel Cracovia. As an uncompleted project, Theory risen another, less 'theoretical' question that is largely related to the practical dimension of presence/absence of this architecture. Curators: Karolina Kolenda, Philippe Pirotte Pictures: Weronika Szmuc |
10 - 24/06/2011
Theory - unrealized project
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